


who waltzed me into this?

by somerdaye



Category: Little Mix (Band), One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somerdaye/pseuds/somerdaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au in which belle amie never existed, and rhythmix was formed with one direction. x factor era.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who waltzed me into this?

**Author's Note:**

> unbeta'd. for lauren, who got me into little mix.

it would've been impossible not to notice them, even if they weren't the five boys across the stage from her when she was told ‘no, you're not quite good enough to make it alone, but why don't we ramp up your humiliation by putting you in a bloody _girl group_  and killing your career before it starts' — after all, the boys were funny, sweet, and, let's face it, insanely good-looking.

perrie loved an ogle as much as the next person, but she hadn't sneaked to the audition to look at boys, had she? it wasn't that she didn't fancy pretty people or wanted to focus entirely on singing, exactly, it was more... she didn't have _time_ , not for that, not for _boys_.  
  
they were excited, of course, they all were, but everyone on stage and behind the judges' table knew that the boys just, well, had more of a chance, was the thing. perrie knew that if she were at home in her pajamas and watching this boy band get formed, she would be intrigued. young, fun, attractive — what wasn't to like? but even on the flight to marbella, where the curly-haired boy was trying to flirt with leigh-anne to hilariously bad results, perrie could recognise that they were _competition_ , and they might be nice, but they already had the upper hand.  
  
she wasn't going to ruin any slim chance rhythmix had by slipping up and fancying one of them. she couldn't risk it.  
  
—  
  
conversely, _he_ hadn't noticed them at all.  
  
to be fair, he hadn't really noticed anybody. he was sure he'd talked to them at some point, yeah, but it couldn't have been anything substantial — it was like how liam claimed to have met him already, at mcdonald's, but zayn couldn't remember for the life of him what they'd talked about — nothing important, nothing terribly interesting. he didn't even know their names. unlike harry, who, zayn learned after waking from his two hour nap, spent the entire flight attempting to charm one of them. you'd think, looking at his confused grimace in her general direction, that he'd never been turned down before. for all zayn knew, he hadn't.  
  
“give it up, mate,” niall said, good-natured and smiling. two traits that zayn was starting to suspect were part of his core. “she's not interested.”  
  
“maybe she's not into blokes,” louis suggested.  
  
liam sighed. it was a sound he made a _lot_ in louis' presence, and zayn had a theory that louis actually lived off the breath exhaling from liam's mouth. “just because she doesn't find harry charming doesn't mean she's not into blokes, louis. that's — something-ist.”  
  
“well, _i'm_ not into blokes, and i so would.”  
  
like everything else about harry and louis' friendship, it was baffling and adorable and a pinch of weird when harry visibly cheered up at louis' words.  
  
“thanks, man,” he said, and louis smiled, throwing an arm around his shoulders and messing with his curls in the same move. while walking through a busy airport, as well. zayn wondered if they practiced.  
  
zayn rolled his eyes and hoisted his bag higher on his shoulder. just another day of being in one direction.  
  
(possibly, their last. but he didn't like to think about that.)  
  
—  
  
after all the years of watching x factor with her mum, perrie had only ever really thought about how _fun_ it looked, being up there on stage and jumping around with the dancers and the lights and the applause all for _you_. objectively, _passively_ , she knew there was a lot of work involved, but up until it became her life, it hadn't really mattered. it was — hard, really, all of it. she knew that once she actually performed her first live show, she'd feel a lot different, but as it was...  
  
she just really didn't want to go home so soon. and the odds weren't looking good.  
  
—  
  
“well,” louis said to him, inappropriately close as usual while rhythmix finished up rehearsals, “they're very... colourful.”  
  
it was apt a description as any, zayn thought.  
  
—  
  
they smashed it, and while the girl group curse still hung over their heads and perrie still didn't let her guard down for a second outside of the sanctity of their bedroom, it was exactly the boost she needed.  
  
now, she could stop ignoring katie waissel in the kitchen, could stop glaring daggers whenever louis tomlinson tried laying a hand on her — which was uncomfortably often, but at least it wasn't just _her_ , he was sort of all over everyone, wasn't he — could accost cher lloyd and beg to be included in her next shopping trip.  
  
she could act like she belonged here, even if it was just for the next six days. she could try and make friends, even.  
  
that's when she noticed, and i mean, really _noticed_ zayn malik.  
  
—  
  
he wasn't sure what time it was, exactly, since he hadn't looked at a clock in some time, but everyone else in the house was asleep. aiden was the last to go upstairs, ruffling zayn's hair like he didn't know from experience how long it took to style it properly. he was still buzzing from the live show, couldn't understand how people were _sleeping_  right now when they were just broadcast across the entire uk.  
  
it was kind of awesome.  
  
thinking about it made him smile, like a secret to the living room wall, and before he knew it he was tapping the tune of viva la vida against his knee with his middle finger. then, he was humming.  
  
everyone was asleep, right, or at least upstairs, so he didn't feel too embarrassed about letting the humming turn into words — so long as he kept quiet, because the very last thing he needed was someone coming downstairs and cooing at him.  
  
he could sing, yeah, so long as he didn't wake anybody. he thought he was doing a pretty good job, but then, he didn't actually hear her come down the stairs, so what did that say.  
  
“you're really good,” one of the girls from rhythmix interrupted, surprising him enough that he leapt to his feet. it was the blonde, the one louis was afraid of. he didn't get it, himself, but he supposed the way she was looking at _him_ — grudging admiration and curiosity — was better than the way she looked at louis, like she was going to skin him alive with nothing but her probably-fake nails. “like... really good. i didn't listen before, i was too — but you are.”  
  
“er,” he said, wishing one of the other boys were here to make up for his lack of social skills. especially in regards to pretty girls in the middle of the night. “thanks. i haven't actually heard you, but i guess you're good, too? i mean, you must be, because you're in the x factor house. here. with me.”  
  
okay, and the admiration/curiosity combination was flown right out the window to make way for an expression that made zayn's face heat up. like she thought he's touched in the head.  
  
she looked at the ground, then, shuffling her feet, and when she looked back up her face was clear, like she wanted to start the whole conversation over. zayn couldn't be happier with that idea, honestly. he wondered if he could steal harry's charm by cutting off one of his curls and keeping it under his pillow. probably not.  
  
“pretty late to be singing alone, innit?”  
  
—  
  
she didn't know why she said it — it wasn't like she wanted to sing _with_ him or anything — but she very badly wanted to move on from his awkward babbling because it was —  
  
— endearing.  
  
all the reasons for not _noticing_ him before reared their ugly heads, but it was too late. now that she had, she couldn't seem to stop herself; his stupidly long eyelashes, his stupid bone structure, his stupid singing voice, his stupid superman t-shirt that she swore she saw louis in a few days ago.  
  
shit. she was, in all senses of the word, screwed. (no, wait. half the senses. _fortunately_ , she scolded her too-disappointed mind.)  
  
“i can't sleep on the best of nights,” zayn said with a shrug and a little relieved half-smile like he hadn't just ruined perrie's goal of taking the competition seriously. “let alone tonight. i don't understand how any of them can just sleep when we were just —”  
  
he cut himself off and looked at his hands, but perrie understood.  
  
“jade's been snoring for hours,” she said. “i don't get it, me, but i guess they burned off their energy on the stage.”  
  
“i don't think i ever could,” zayn said. he shook his head like the idea got even more ridiculous the longer he thought about it. perrie knew that feeling — she got it often in regards to louis tomlinson.  
  
biting back all the things she wanted to say, from ‘stop being so pretty this instant' to ‘how heavy a sleeper do you think louis is, because now that i think on it, i might really want to shave one of his eyebrows off for kicks', perrie gestured vaguely at the tv.  
  
he wasn't even _looking_ at her, though, so she sighed and said, “telly, then?”  
  
—  
  
“sure,” he said, head snapping up in time to catch a brief smile.  
  
it was the first time he'd seen her smile and it wasn't — it wasn't, whatever, _fantastic_ or life-changing or anything, and his heart didn't skip a beat and he didn't blush with the force of how beautiful she was or anything else he'd read in the books his sisters collected like pokemon — but it made him want to make it happen again. and again. and some more after that.  
  
he thought, as he sat a safe distance away from her on the sofa (he didn't want to wake up with one eyebrow like louis was clearly going to one of these days), that it would be rude if he asked for her name now. at least harry would know.  
  
—  
  
“you looooove him!” jesy sang, taking perrie's mobile away so she could scroll through her texts to zayn.  
  
not that there was anything incriminating there — at _all_ — but perrie still panicked a bit, grabbing for her phone and defaulting to the typical teenage screech of “oh my _god_ i do _not_  shut _up_!”  
  
“not that i blame you,” jesy said, easily dancing out of perrie's reach. sometimes being on the top bunk really sucked for perrie. “he's absolutely gorgeous, isn't he?”  
  
“who's gorgeous?” leigh-anne asked, looking up from her laptop.  
  
“you are, luv,” jade called from the bathroom, and perrie could appreciate, through her irritation, the happy crinkling around leigh-anne's eyes. they hadn't been here four weeks and she absolutely loved these girls. she didn't want to go home without them; her bedroom just wouldn't feel the same without jade's toenail clippings everywhere and leigh-anne's quite frankly terrifying collection of justin bieber magasines and jesy's snapbacks being hung all around the room.  
  
she loved these girls; however gorgeous he might be, she did not love zayn.  
  
“i don't love him,” she said out loud. “how could i possibly love him? i barely know him, do i?”  
  
“yeah, but that was an exaggeration for annoyance's sake,” jesy said with a shit-eating grin. leigh-anne laughed from her own bunk, and perrie threw a pillow at her. “you fancy him, though, don't you?”  
  
they were all looking at her now — jade was even sticking her head out from the en-suite, curls dripping.  
  
all of them waiting for a positive answer. a ‘yes, i fancy him', or ‘doesn't everyone? i mean, look at him'. or even, ‘i don't know what you're talking about', when clearly she did, and they would badger her until she caved and then they'd squeal a bit — well, jade might — but she couldn't do that to them. couldn't tell them half-truths.  
  
“i can't right now,” she said, sounding a lot more upset about that fact than she thought she was. “not while we're still the underdogs. i mean, we have to change our name, and — and it's not a big _deal_ , i guess, but we're... we're stuck with that name, yeah? it's us. the four of us. and we're not going to get through this competition if we're spending valuable time thinking about or _being_ with boys. no matter how devastatingly gorgeous they are. i mean... right?”  
  
she was punching her pillow into a better shape to avoid looking at the girls, but suddenly she had an armful of soaking wet jade.  
  
“babe, put some trousers on,” perrie complained, but she couldn't complain because 1) jade gave the best hugs perrie'd ever received in her _life_ and 2) at least jade was wearing _some_  clothes, yeah, if it had been jesy in the shower she would've gotten to second base with a bandmate by complete accident.  
  
saying meaningless phrases of comfort (‘it'll be okay', ‘i'm sorry', ‘maybe when we're done on x factor you can chat him up'), jesy and leigh-anne climbed awkwardly into the bunk that was too small for _one_ person, let alone four.  
  
“i love you guys a lot,” perrie said, and the tears in her eyes were solely because of how strongly she felt about this little last-minute group of theirs.  
  
well, at least, like, ninety percent, anyway.  
  
—  
  
her name was perrie, which explained louis' platypus jokes, and her group's name had been changed to ‘little mix' which zayn thought sounded really quite sweet. it suited them well, they all agreed. (niall, in particular, seemed to get a kick out of the way louis' and liam's different accents flowed around the name. something about the t's, but niall could never stop laughing long enough to explain it to zayn.)  
  
(not that, you know, he cared.)  
  
now that he knew her name, it was hard for zayn not to use it in every sentence he spoke to her. it wasn't exactly an amazing name, but it was _hers_ and it suited her even better than 'little mix' suited her group.  
  
like, zayn had never been a poetic sort of person, but he appreciated things other people didn't seem to — the laugh lines bracketing his mother's mouth, the weight of a friend's hand on his shoulder — things like that. things like names. names were either terribly common or a little strange (he knew which his own fell into, in this country), but you could know a dozen _ashley_ s and still be able to tell them apart in your mind, because a person's name _became_ them, a part of them. he always thought the 'official' meanings of names were bullshit.  
  
 _niall_ was sunshine; _liam_ was stability; _louis_ was spontaneity; _harry_  was soft, warm.  
  
and _perrie_ was the best puzzle ever put in front of him.  
  
her seemingly violent mood swings kept him on his toes, for sure. one second she'd be laughing at paije with him and the next, she was storming out of the room for no reason whatsoever. the strangest part was that her bandmates kept glaring at him as if it was _his_ fault which was, clearly, impossible.  
  
he hadn't done anything. had he?  
  
—  
  
"i hate him sometimes," perrie said, and leigh-anne hummed sympathetically as she pulled a brush through perrie's hair. "i really, really do."  
  
"you really don't," said leigh-anne.  
  
she really didn't. still, she groaned, turning her face into a pillow. "let me keep up the illusion that i hate him sometimes, would you? is that so much to ask?" leigh-anne didn't say anything in response, which was a response in and of itself. an effective one, too.  
  
—  
  
in retrospect, asking niall for advice was a bad idea on zayn's part.  
  
he kept forgetting that everybody _liked_ niall, and niall liked everybody right back. he didn't understand zayn's awkwardness, which still sometimes made an appearance around his bandmates, and he didn't pretend to.  
  
faced with perrie's wide, scandalised eyes, her hand to her mouth like a protectice barrier, he realised that maybe, niall's suggestion of 'just kiss her, what's the worst she can do?' was more suited to niall himself. he's sure if niall leaned over in the middle of their late night kitchen rendez-vous and planted his lips onto hers, perrie would smile. or laugh. niall kind of had that effect on people.  
  
she's backing away, though, and zayn thinks his stomach has dropped out through his feet, seeping into the earth and making its way towards magma.  
  
"i'm sorry," he said uselessly.  
  
perrie shook her head, over and over, but didn't remove her hand from her mouth or, for that matter, blink. she looked like she wanted to say something, but zayn couldn't fathom what it was, if she could even manage words.  
  
—  
  
 _it's not your fault, it's me_ , is what perrie wanted to say, but something (her brain, her voice, her tongue) wasn't working properly, so instead, she did the cowardly thing. she turned and half-ran out of the kitchen.  
  
—  
  
niall would've asked questions that zayn didn't particularly want to answer, so he shook liam gently awake. harry was on the top bunk and he didn't want to deal with louis right now, but also liam was stellar at not asking questions and just waiting for them to talk. it was a quality zayn admired in a friend.  
  
"can't sleep," was all zayn said when liam's eyes blinked confusedly open. "can i...?"  
  
it took a few moments for liam to cotton on — it was two in the morning, after all — but he nodded when he did, shuffling to the wall so zayn had at least a little space to lie down.  
  
zayn said, "thanks", and climbed under liam's covers, snuggling up with him in a way he wouldn't have been comfortable with doing two months ago. before one direction, before harry's stepdad's bungalow, before louis threw any concept of personal space out the window. he wondered what his mates would think back home if he started hanging off them the way he could with these boys.  
  
one of the weird things he was picking up on, being in this band, was how to share a bed with each of them in turn. harry and louis were both ridiculous cuddlers, and once had to be disentangled by an amused (in an 'i-don't-want-to-know' sort of way) matt; niall tended to flop wherever he fell and it was easier to just stay out of his way as bed as possible.  
  
liam wasn't a cuddler, but his arm snaked around zayn anyway, because he must've been able to tell that zayn needed the comfort. and because he did, he laced his fingers through liam's.  
  
"alright?" liam asked, his voice sounding too loud in the room. zayn wondered if the other boys were all lying awake, waiting with baited breath to hear what zayn's issue was. then again, he wasn't sure louis knew how to keep his mouth shut like that, so it was up in the air.  
  
"it's nothing life-threatening," he whispered, and liam squeezed his hand.  
  
—  
  
she wouldn't say she was an expert in avoidance, but the other girls were helping as best as they could, and zayn wasn't actively trying to seek her out, so she managed to not so much as be in the same room as him for a week and a half.  
  
but then, little mix was in the bottom two, and zayn malik was the last thing on her mind.  
  
—  
  
"if they go home i'm punching the entire nation in the face," said niall, and zayn stared; he hadn't been aware niall could sound so menacing.  
  
"it's the girl group curse," harry said, frowning.  
  
they knew he was right, because little mix had put on a kick-ass performance the night before, blowing even rebecca out of the water. it didn't make sense but, then, these things rarely did. zayn struggled to remember a time a democratic vote had worked out well for anyone in reality television.  
  
zayn watched perrie shaking, hands clasped with one of her bandmates — leigh-anne, zayn thought absently, the one who didn't take any of harry's shit — and silently agreed with niall.  
  
—  
  
they were saved, but perrie couldn't stop shaking, and tears were still streaming down jesy's face. they hadn't gone home, but it was like someone had splashed cold water in their faces, reminding them that they might be getting really good, but people still _didn't like girl groups_ , and four brightly-coloured girls weren't going to change their minds.  
  
when they got back to their bedroom, hiding from the rest of the house, there was a piece of paper folded neatly on perrie's pillow.  
  
 _glad you're staying. would have missed you.  —Z_ , it said.  
  
she had enough time to hate herself for both getting emotionally involved with a boy and also for not letting said boy know she cared about him. simultaneously. it was a very strange guilt, but perrie let it wash over her, because she needed it right then.  
  
then, she noticed the postscript: _smile_. accompanied by a pretty good cartoon of leigh-anne holding harry's ankle, dangling him over the thames.  
  
perrie laughed in spite of herself, and when the other girls turned to her with half-hopeful faces, just wanting to be able to laugh with her, she showed them the note. part of her wanted to keep it to herself, but the other, larger, part of her just revelled in how it made each of them smile, in turn. leigh-anne even cracked up at the doodle.  
  
"we did so well yesterday," jade said, apropos of nothing. "and we still..."  
  
"yeah, we know," jesy said, stroking her back, and leigh-anne reminded her, "we were there, jade."  
  
jade giggled, and perrie was surprised no woodland creatures came bursting through the window. "no, you dinkheads. i just meant... like, no matter what we do, we're still going to be the underdogs, aren't we?"  
  
as hopeless as that sounded, it was true. after they all nodded, perrie wondered why jade was still smiling so brightly.  
  
"that's bad, babe," perrie said.  
  
"no," jade insisted. she sounded like she was frustrated that nobody understood what she was getting at, and flailed her hands a bit. "i mean, yeah, okay, it's pretty bad, but there's a silver lining, isn't there?" at the blank stares, she let out a sigh liam payne would've been proud of. "perrie should stop worrying so much about fancying zayn, because it looks like no amount of hard work and focus will guarantee us a spot in the finals?"  
  
jesy and leigh-anne both said " _ohhhhh_ ," all drawn out and mischievous, and while perrie was pleased that her girls were smiling, she wasn't too keen on the reason.  
  
"we nearly got sent home and your solution is to tell me to be _more_  unfocused?" perrie asked, voice rising to a shrill pitch.  
  
"no," jade repeated. her eyes bored into perrie's. "my solution is to tell you to be happy while you can, yeah? you might never see this boy again, and then you'll be bitter the rest of your life that you never found out what his lips felt like."  
  
"actually," perrie said, face hot, and the rest of her sentence was drowned out by gasps and squeals and laughter.  
  
—  
  
"you're pretty far gone, aren't you, mate?" harry asked. they could hear the girls squealing, laughing, from the kitchen, and zayn felt pretty damned proud of himself for cheering them all up, even if that wasn't exactly his intended goal.  
  
zayn gave him a pointed look. "i'm not the only one, _mate_."  
  
sometimes he wondered if he was the one one who'd noticed. harry snorted a laugh and nodded a little.  
  
"fair enough, but don't spread it around. it's my best-kept secret."  
  
zayn — hoped harry was kidding, he really did.  
  
"if that's your best kept secret, hazza," he said, "i'd hate to see the others."  
  
"if you want to tell someone your deepest secret," harry said, promptly, like he was quoting something, "say it outright. say it as a joke. that way, when everyone is angry you never told them, you get off on a technicality."  
  
"and you also don't get hurt," zayn pointed out.  
  
shrugging, harry asked, "who wants to get hurt?", and zayn didn't have an answer for him that would make coming clean sound more appealing. harry blew out a breath. "yeah."  
  
—  
  
perrie did something she hadn't in a long time; a pros and cons list. it wasn't very _telling_ , not at first. not until she realised that after every con she was adding a rationalisation or reason in parentheses. all right, she fancied zayn, and judging from his actions, he reciprocated, yeah, so she slept easy that night. she could stop being so twisted up about things, if only for jade's sake. there was a ridiculous number of things she would do for her girls.  
  
—  
  
something zayn was passively familiar with was perrie's determination. her determination to prove the girl group haters wrong, her determination to keep harry away from the bras on the floor in little mix's room, her determination to get a pitch _just_ right.  
  
it was definitely something he admired about her, but he'd never wanted the steely glint in her eyes turned on him.  
  
"sorry about the note," he said, putting his hands up in a defensive gesture lest she decide to rugby tackle him into the refrigerator. which didn't seem entirely unlikely. "i just wanted to cheer you up, i wasn't trying to be _that_ guy."  
  
"you weren't," perrie said, still stony-faced. she took a step closer, and zayn wished he could move backwards. the fridge was in the way, though, the cold air blowing against his back, and he didn't think she'd take it too well if he chose to run. so he stayed, stock-still, like he was keeping eye contact with a venomous snake. (really, he never used to be this scared of her. louis was rubbing off on him.)  
  
she surged forward then, and he jumped, and it was only her hands, trapping his jaw between them, that made certain their lips collided. he brought his own hands up, surprised, to press against hers.  
  
unfortunately, she seemed to take that as a cue to pull back.  
  
"sorry," she said, sheepish. "i just — really wanted to do that."  
  
"do you hear me complaining?" zayn asked. he laughed at his own question, and she smiled in return, and he — slowly, to give her time to panic like she did last time, if she had to — cupped one of his hands at the back of her neck, underneath all her waves of hair. "i am one hundred billion percent okay with this."  
  
perrie laughed, and it wasn't magical, and zayn didn't, whatever, fall in love on the spot, but it was a really _nice_ sound to hear. he could do with hearing it more.  
  
"you're a distraction," she said, in a strangely stern voice, before she leaned in to kiss him again.  
  
he didn't really care what that meant.  
  
—  
  
neither did she. **  
**


End file.
